How To Be Bad
by ninety6tears
Summary: Only Jim Kirk could turn bucking the everyday evils of a tyrannical empire into a bonding experience. Redux of TOS episode "Mirror, Mirror."
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"What, we can't just _ask_, if they have any dilithium?"

"They don't know," Jim replied boredly.

"How could they not know if they have dilithium?" Scotty asked as he got up from where he'd been lounging with his legs hanging off the transporter level.

"So we're..." McCoy shook his head. "We're asking to look for dilithium on their planet, knowing fully well that if we find it, they probably won't let us have it anyway?"

"All in a day's work....Hi, Spock." That last Kirk said with a slow, slightly confused tone, as the three of them were joined on the transporter pad by his first officer.

Spock simply nodded and stood to the right of Jim, whose face was spreading into a slow smirk. After a moment he leaned forward enough to look over at McCoy, who was starting to wear the same expression.

"Preparing to energize, Keptin," Chekov announced. "I will see all of you when—"

"Stop!" Just as the system started booting up, Jim's face broke out into a wide grin, his shoulders shaking as he made a waving motion and yelled, "Hold on, stop, somebody get me the roster, _damn_ it..."

McCoy was gradually dissolving into a deep and howling laughter, leaning forward to support his hands on his knees. Scotty just looked confused.

"Captain," Spock said with a look of subdued bewilderment directed at a now similarly incapacitated Kirk. "Would you care to explain what is so humorous?"

"Spock..." Jim was shaking his head in disbelief, landing his hand on Spock's shoulder. "Man, you're not on this mission."

Scotty immediately caught on to laughing at it too, whereas McCoy was positively applauding, declaring through his deep snickers, "This is the best thing that's happened to me, in years..."

"Yes, thank you," Kirk was saying as he crouched and grabbed the PADD from a yeoman who was handing it up.

"You_ wrote_ the roster, Jim."

"Yeah, and I thought—Where's Lieutenant Uhura?"

Spock's eyebrow was twitching up tightly. "When I spoke to her earlier, she indicated no knowledge that she was assigned to this mission."

"Aw, damn, we'll have to just take Spock." McCoy remarked, "If she didn't read the report..."

"She should be fine, she reads all the reports," Jim said.

Scotty dubiously said, "Nuh-uh. Nobody reads _all_ the reports."

In a harmonic unison Jim and Spock replied, "She does."

They were still cracking over the mishap some ten minutes later when Uhura came running in, wearing her standard pants and black shirt, arms scrambling through the uniform red she was changing into on foot. Her PADD satchel fell from a grasp between her teeth and landed in Spock's brisk catch as he was exiting the room. He was handing it to her when the still mirthful captain hollered, "Don't worry, Spock, we'll be back in time for dinner."

He rather pointedly ignored the laughing team, only offering a note of goodbye to Uhura as he continued out the door, making the rest laugh even more as Kirk was mock-sweetly crooning, "He's gonna miss us." Uhura came walking ever so seriously and quickly up to the pad, and he got a hold of himself. "Okay, seriously, we are running _late_. Energize."

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"Well." Jim turned around from the drop-off into a massive crater, flipping the lid shut on his tricorder. "You guys think there's any dilithium down there?"

"I think the question is, do we give a damn," McCoy returned. "It's hot as hell down here, man."

"It would be a good idea to process the mineral make-up of the surrounding landscape and see if it's likely to be a dilithium-abundant area. That's a lot of land mass to overlook." Uhura was slowly looking straight up to Kirk from where she was rather pointlessly analyzing a tree with her tricorder. Turning towards everyone else with a sigh, she added, "Spock would be more familiar with the biology."

"Oh, Lieutenant?" Jim was in too laid-back a mood to really be defensive. "Are you expressing some issues with my personnel assignments?"

"Is there a respectful answer to that question, Captain?"

"She says, 'Captain,' it sounds like she's really saying 'Fuck off and die.'"

"_Bones_," Jim said.

"Sorry. Jim, it's _hot_."

"I know it's hot, what do you want me to do?"

They started a long stroll around the perimeter of the crater. A few minutes in and Jim was already trying to ask Uhura what was bugging the crap out of her.

"I mean, besides the usual."

"What's the usual?"

"Well." He shrugged. "Me."

"No, it's pretty much the usual."

He furrowed his brow. "Okay, well..."

"We're not talking right now, okay? I might say something out of line."

In step beside her, he sighed. "You know, you can...be a little more off the record with me, I'm not one to make—"

"My problem is that I was apparently assigned to a mission and did not get any kind of official notice—"

"Hey, look, if you didn't really want to—"

"Let me reword that. I was finally assigned to a mission that isn't just a damn milk run and did not get any kind of official notice, was nearly botched out of it by the misunderstanding of an only slightly higher-ranking officer who goes on twice as many missions as I do as well as by the general conception that_ Nyota Uhura_ is always on top of everything whether she's asked to be or not, and as a result, am relatively unprepared for, said mission."

Jim took in and let out a quick breath. "Okay, one thing at a time. I feel like you're accusing me of some kind of favoritism here, which would be _completely_ wrong—"

She scoffed.

"—because you're one of my favoritest favorite things?"

"Could you try to actually talk like a captain for five minutes?" she asked, suddenly somewhat lethally irritated, the straightness of her body tightening up as they continued to walk.

"...Okay. You're the best communications specialist in the entire fleet, and aside from days when we're hanging close to safe harbors, I feel better about having you on the bridge. But, you are also one of the most qualified officers, and if you are dissatisfied with the variety of your work load, I can consider changing up your missions for the next month."

Her severity lightened, but only grudgingly. He careened in to try to look at her expression, expectant.

"Okay?" he prodded. "I consider myself pretty approachable, you know. God, I can't believe I'm having to talk to you about this in the middle of a mission."

"Well, you brought it up, Jim—"

"_Bones_...Stay out of this, please."

"Are they always like this?" Scotty asked in curiosity, walking next to McCoy a few feet back.

McCoy just laughed. "You haven't noticed? It's not so bad for some reason when Spock's around, but the missions with these two are varying levels of brutal every time."

"We've got company," Uhura interrupted. The other three turned to stare off where she was looking at a couple figures nearing in the distance.

"Oh, good," McCoy said.

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"Listen. If this isn't even up for negotiation..." Jim was slowly explaining with his finger pointing on the table, "I'm honestly not understanding why you would give us clearance to _look_ for the resources in the first place."

"To put it bluntly," the Halkan leader replied in the not at all blunt and rather fragile way in which all of his people talked, "we are aware of your superior weaponry and did not think we had any choice in the matter."

"Well, see, that's...That's not what's going on here." Jim shook his head, scratching at the back of his head. "And it's kind of a mess, actually, because we're now aware that the dilithium is here, because you just told us exactly where it is, and since the search was cleared and scheduled we can't really just not report it back. And I'm sure that once the information gets bureaucratically regurgitated and all that, we're going to be assigned to come back here in a week or so to ask you about it again. And I'm _sure_ that your answer will be the same then, but—You see why this looks kind of bad for us."

The Halkan turned to his advisor for a moment, and Jim felt a stiff interruption at his right.

"Your body language is passive-aggressive, they think you're making subtle threats," Uhura was whispering.

Jim leaned back for a befuddled second, then thickly whispered, "I'm just uncomfortable—How can I have passive-aggressive _body language_!?"

"_Shhh_," McCoy warned, shifty and anxious without completely understanding the delicacy of the matter.

Some minutes later, after their little convention, the Halkans turned back and said, with sober conviction, "We surrender."

Jim's mouth opened, and for a second nothing came out. "Uh. N—no. No..."

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"We're ready to beam up, what's going on?"

The relief of getting the matter cleared up was quickly eclipsed by the feeling, a certain _feeling_ Jim was always able to instinctively get that said, _Today is a transporter malfunction day_.

"Wha's going on?" Scotty complained after a heavy swig of water.

"You're on land and Chekov's not on duty anymore, what do you think's the problem?"

"_I_," McCoy declared slowly, "am having something spectacularly unhealthy for dinner tonight."

"Me too," Uhura agreed in a tired mumble.

Ten minutes later somebody finally came over the comm to confirm they were ready to get them back up, and they formed into a tighter group of exhausted stances. Kirk was still trying to talk to the current technician.

"Hey, what was the problem?...Ensign?"

Before there was a response, the world around them scattered apart.

They came through to the transporter pad, and Jim was wiping his eyes tiredly when his glance landed, in a very pointed and narrow way, on the exposed midriff of his communications officer.

Looking around, he immediately laughed, and stretched his arms out noticing his own bizarre apparel; his shirt was some sleeveless version of his usual uniform tunic that looked like a cross between an old-fashioned military jerkin and a muscle tee he'd only be caught exercising in. What he'd first noticed on Uhura was a short racerbacked excuse for a top that was more like a bra, and a skirt that looked like something only worn at bachelor parties to flaunt a sexy schoolgirl gimic.

What the hell was going on.

"Scotty?" He shook his head, almost laughing again. "How the hell did you swing this?"

"This isn' me, Captain," he insisted, and Jim was convinced when he saw that all four of them, including him, had fallen victim to this apparent prank.

"Well—Who knows—?"

Just then the transporter room door opened and the confused and strangely frightened-looking Ensign M'raya who'd just beamed them up and was _also_ wearing a very different uniform, was joined by a scantily clad Lieutenant Sraine, who marched up to the transporter and flung an arm in the ensign's direction, and proclaimed, "We should just airlock his stupid ass."

Kirk broke in an amused grin. "Okay, okay, okay. How many people are in on this?"

He didn't expect the act to keep going on much longer, but Sraine's face sprung into a menacing display of teeth and anger and she yelled, "It's this _invalid's_ fault." The ensign fumbled with something and seemed to find an immediate excuse to leave the room. Sraine just glared after him. "Captain, we both know he can't remember a transporter code to save his ass—"

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Uhura snapped, which jolted a couple of the others on the pad. "M'raya has a memory disorder, he's really sensitive about it."

"Oh, really?" The grin broke out on Lieutenant Sraine's face like she was _supposed_ to be amused. "I'll have to keep that in mind."

"Uh, look, Lieutenant, your...behavior..." Jim blinked, and then he added an "Um" that seemed like the sound effect to accompany him finally realizing that something was really not right here. "You're, uh, you're. Dismissed. Uh."

The engineering officer then gave some gesture that involved pounding her chest, giving a fierce little nod, and looking completely ridiculous, and then turned and left.

"Okay, everybody shut up for just a minute?" Jim suggested, already interrupting a couple alarmed comments flooding his way.

Then a familiar voice came over the comm.

"Have you returned with information about the resources, Captain?"

"Spock." Jim cleared his throat. "How, uh, how are you?"

At his side, Uhura mouthed, _How_ are _you?!_

"I mean, yes," Jim corrected.

"I shall probably intercede you in the corridor. We should discuss this matter in private."

"Okay," he replied uncertainly. Then he turned to the rest, quietly ordered, "Stay at my back, but casual-like? Don't look like you're following me." He got a series of wide-eyed nods, and they entered the corridor.

They got several yards down, and then Spock appeared around the bend.

He began, "Captain—"

And Jim was turning around, his hand clamping over his mouth as he was ducking as quickly as possible into the nearest room, snatching Bones with him by the arm. In a moment of uncertain horror, Scotty and Uhura's eyes met, and they scrambled after in a stupid-looking group spill into what turned out to be a small equipment storage, quickly shut the door behind them.

Jim was doubled over a tiny table, shaking with laughter.

"He has—" He cut himself off with another peel of snickers. "...He has a _goatee_."

"'Casual-like,'" McCoy repeated.

"I...I don't think this is a prank, guys," Jim finally declared when he'd gotten a hold of himself. "I'm gonna go with alternate dimension?...Scotty?"

"Alternate reality I'd say, yeah." He looked at Uhura next to him.

"Thirded."

"God _dammit_..." McCoy sighed.

"Okay," Jim said decidedly, "everybody, go mingle for a bit, report back to my quarters, I guess, in about thirty minutes. Just...take notes, pick up on how we should be acting, and...I'm gonna go with be a bunch of bitches, cause that stuff with Sraine?..."

They all nodded in grim incredulity, and dispersed.

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Approximately thirty minutes later, the small crowd was gathered in Jim's cabin.

"So," he said. "This place is kinda fucked up."

"I've been monitoring the messages from this week." Uhura looked in concern at Jim. "They're basically dealing with the same race of people, only they're not going to play nice."

"Yeah, I know," Jim said. "I gathered from a little talk with bizarro-Spock that we're giving them about a week to think over their willingness to live."

"There are things, in sick bay," McCoy slowly declared, "that should not be in sick bay."

Scotty intoned with finality, "These people don't know how to take care of a ship," as if his was the most horrifying tale to tell.

"So like." McCoy scratched at his hair. "They recognize us. Does that mean...they're getting some_ company _back home?"

Jim's eyebrows lifted in an expression of having already contemplated that with some amusement and fascination. Scotty launched into a very technical explanation that basically meant "Yes."

They commenced to begin proposing the solution, which quickly fell to Jim asking, "Can you fake an ion storm or not?"

"I don't see why not," Scotty said with a shrug. "But I would need the—"

He got cut off by the comm signal going off, and Jim barked, "What?"

"Captain," came Spock's voice, with a trace of slightly irritated confusion, "we are in the process of arresting an intruding Klingon vessel, your participation—"

"I'll be out soon, fuck, how many of these assholes are we gonna have to deal with this month?"

"Indeed," Spock replied boredly, and signed off, leaving Jim to the consternated and in a couple cases impressed looks of his crewmates.

"Jesus, Jim," McCoy exclaimed, a smile bending onto his features.

"And here I was thinking you were already kind of a wanker," Scotty joked.

"Gentlemen?" Uhura delicately cut through the segue with a motion of her hands.

Getting quickly down to what business they could cover before Jim had to leave, McCoy asked, "Alright, so are we faking it till we make it here? Couldn't we theoretically just tell them that we, uh—"

"I don't know about that," Jim said with an anxious seething sound attached.

"Righ', let's just tell them we're a peaceful bunch, and I'm sure they'll be worried about how much they miss their buddies," Scotty said.

"'We can get mutiny for you wholesale,'" Uhura muttered with a crisp look of mock-cheer.

"Point taken," McCoy grunted.

"I need to get out there, and...enjoy Klingons being our bitches for once, I guess. I'm _kidding_, I'm kidding. Jeez." His last bits were directed at the slightest glare from Nyota before he reported back.

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It wasn't long before she was coming after him with the subdued angry shriek in her features, snatching him by the elbow and growling something about meeting back at his quarters.

She was rounding on him as soon as they were alone, while his arms were already coming up in apologetic surrender.

"_Captain_—" She really deserved some credit for attempting some measure of respect. But, "What the _fuck_ are we supposed to do now?"

"I don't _know_, I'm figuring it out, okay?" he yelled back just as frantically.

"You just ordered McCoy to the brig. Think about that for one _second_."

"I know that I—"

"You can't order him out of the brig. You can't afford another display of leniency, I swear to _God_, if you end up blowing the lid on us—"

"I understand the problem, Lieutenant, but can you honestly tell me you would've reacted differently?" he demanded. "I wasn't about to watch Bones get tortured for treating a fucking papercut."

This was an exaggeration; the "enemy" had been narrowly stabbed for refusing to comply to a vessel search. The fact that the ship's doctor had attemped to surreptitiously repair the victim's tissue had rumored like wildfire until she'd had to make an excuse to leave her post to see just how bad the situation had been screwed up already.

Speaking very slowly as if it was the only way to keep from shouting, Uhura said, "Making sure we're not leaving anybody behind is a _little_ more important, don't you think?..._Ugh._ If Spock had been here..."

"Scotty."

The engineer was lingering at the door. "I've—I've got tuh—"

"Get in here now, and tell me what you know," Jim commanded impatiently.

"The ship's library computer says we can create uh, a sort of artificial ion storm with theoretically the same conditions, which would allow us the capacity to beam back through the gap in the parallel universe—"

"And you can do it?"

"Yeah, but...I won't have much help, and I'm wasting time even now, it could possibly take me all the week we've got before the atmospheric conditions allow me to—"

"Did you say," Uhura evenly demanded, "a _week_?"

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He attempted to calm her down, but could tell she was resigned and possibly more collected in her irritation when she just interrupted him with, "Yes, I can keep playing the part, I get it. Would you_ leave_?"

He showed up at her quarters again less than an hour later.

Resigned, exhausted, she gave an annoyed sigh and asked, "What?"

He gave an uneasy pointing motion down the hallway, a vague one, as his cabin wasn't even on the same floor. "Uh...There's..."

"What _is _it?"

"There's a _woman_..." He shook his head helplessly. "In my room."

She looked blank, then after a moment just snickered unsympathetically. "Oh, I think you know how to take care of that."

"Oh, come on," he whined. "That's just wrong."

They were drawing some attention now, so Uhura rolled her eyes and motioned for him to come in, though she looked like she was more than eager to kick him back out of it within a couple seconds.

"Can I—?"

"No." She was immediately cutting him off with her hands. "Absolutely not."

His shoulders sunk a bit. "I'll sleep on the_ floor_, of course—"

"_No_. What did you do, just leave without saying anything? Maybe she'll leave. Or maybe you could just ask her to?" Nyota suggested this as if she was speaking to a toddler.

He cringed. "What if...you know, what if we're in a serious relationship?"

That actually made her break out into an amused smile, and she let out a couple throaty giggles. "Wow. This _is _your worst nightmare, isn't it?"

"What, and you're having a ball?" he demanded. "It's fucking creepy here...I feel like we should all stick together."

Shaking her head, still very annoyed and very amused at the same time, she let out an irritated groan of, "You are such a baby."

She was turning away and shucking off her slippers, and Jim was turning to leave when he felt something cushy colliding with his shoulder. He caught it in time to realize it was a pillow, and he gave her a grin.

"You better not snore," she warned as she threw an extra blanket for him onto the floor.

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Jim did snore after all, just a little. By the time they'd gotten through the first thirty hours of being on the ISS Enterprise, getting a good night's sleep seemed like her only brief refuge, and also impossible. But after Jim begged and begged in such an amusing and satisfying way, she really felt too sorry for him not to let him crash on the floor again.

It was really the least of her problems anyway. Differentiations in the colonial activity of a variety of races made for slightly tweaked and in a couple cases completely unrecognizable dialects. She was okay at faking it, particularly since competence was purely variable all throughout the ship. These people had the smarts, but when they reported for duty with their slimy lazy smiles and pretty much dicked around whenever nothing interesting was happening, it gave one an uneasy question of what they were actually using their cunning for. Feeling less than useful at her post which only sometimes gave them a voyeuristic advantage, she took to a guarded and surreptitious scrutiny of those around her. The way that Kirk would show up to the bridge and treat everyone a bit inconsistently, she knew he wasn't paying close enough attention.

She didn't think she could really be blamed for hiding out at every opportunity while she was off-duty, attempting to help Scotty down in engineering in whatever increments of time didn't look suspicious.

"I don't see why it matters. People might just think we're screwing or something." Scotty laughed at that, but then she shrugged and said, "But we've already been suspicious enough, I guess."

"McCoy owes us a beer or two, that's for sure," he insisted. "Han' me that, will ya?"

She got on her tiptoes to hand him something while his upper body spilled out of some metallic tunnel with a mess of chords that, she took his word for it, had something to do with maintaining the ship's atmospheric regulators. "I'm sorry I'm not much help...Is there a Keenser running around here?"

"Eh..." Scotty looked at unease, and said, dipping back into the tube, "Apparently not anymore."

She didn't ask.

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"You ordered a shore leave?" she demanded when he showed up at her quarters on what she'd realized in the morning was her day off.

"Uh, why. Not?"

"You want to go on shore leave," she clarified.

"I don't want to go gallivanting through some next mission pretending I know what the hell I'm doing. It's really not that suspicious, since there's only so much we can even get done when we're, you know, in the process of systematically threatening a peaceful society."

"Sorry if I just don't see myself taking a little vacation instead of trying to help out Scotty or, attempt to improve _some_ aspect of these people's ethics, or I don't know, _prevent them from doing bad things they're about to do_."

"I'm working on Spock."

She looked over with a raise of her eyebrows. "Oh?"

"I am. But tonight I'm going out for a drink."

"You can't be serious. What do you think it'll even be like down there?"

"Guess we'll find out?"

"We." She scoffed.

"Come on, Uhura, you need to get out of this room. Why have you been doing that? You're like hibernating in here when you don't absolutely have to be on duty."

"You're the one who said that it's creepy."

"Yeah, but it's kind of important to mingle. I don't imagine you're acting much like the other you usually would..."

"Um." With a grimace, her tone became bitter. "I don't think you realize what I would have to be tolerating if I was effectively acting like this other person. So."

She just shrugged and let a folded pair of pants fall to the floor to punctuate that, continuing to go through straightening out her recreation clothes. She stiffly resumed this as Jim looked narrowly at her, finally saying, "Somebody's bothering you."

She just gave him a look as if to say, _Yeah, no shit_, and got back to folding, turned away from him. He stepped closer, watching her a bit longer in hesitation.

"...Sulu?"

And she was rounding on him, pointing a finger in warning. "Do _not_ mess with him—"

He let out a wordless noise, and she cut off his next exclamation.

"No, okay, he _hates_ you. I can just tell, that he's waiting for the first thing he can use against you, so don't think for one second that you have an ounce of authority over him cause he's just _itching_ to sick the mutiny dogs on you the very second you show any more weakness. It's the only excuse he needs."

"No." Jim was shaking his head simply. "Nope, sorry, fuck off, try again. I'm not going to just let—"

"What? What are you going to do?" Her face was lit up with bright mockery. "Why don't you pull up the protocol guide, assuming there even _is_ one, and see if there is any policy whatsoever about sexual harassment. In the meantime, I'm actually quite practiced at kicking groins."

He was still kind of irritated then, and speechless.

Her voice was wringing tighter with growing stress. "Please don't fuck this up for another comparatively trivial thing, please, _please_. It's very cute how you have literally no perspective on things when Spock isn't around and insist on being the nice guy, but it's going to get us _stuck_ here."

"Hey." He was serious in a different way then. "Don't even say that. We're getting out of here."

"Fine. Okay..." She let a shirt fall. "So again, why did you come in here?"

He gave a sort of dazed look at the pile of clothes. "You're coming down planetside."

"The hell I am."

"Come on, you don't have to even hang out with me. I've known you long enough to know you could go for a couple beers right now."

She continued to insist she wasn't going, but she was looking through the clothes already for the least revealing excuse for casual wear she could find.

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When they entered the bar, Kirk kept squinting around in astonishment at how the whole place was darker and slightly more crowded than he remembered from its parallel. The part that made Uhura pull in on herself like she didn't want to rub up against anybody was the huge cage in the middle of the establishment where a man was currently getting violently thrown into the loud jangle of the grid.

There were several other crewmembers there. As she noticed them she leaned in to flatly say over the noise, "You wanna mingle, mingle. I'm getting a drink."

There were bets going, not only on the people fighting but on some little animals that looked something like scorpion-tailed cats, far off to the side of the center. Lieutenant Riley had a dazedly amused look watching it while Kirk put on his most ambiguously menacing grin and clapped him on the back.

It wasn't long before he just wound up sitting with Uhura at the bar, which was actually the least populated area and the only place where you could really hear yourself talk.

"Look, I should probably ask if I'm still...on duty, considering," she paused with a shrug before muttering, "we haven't technically gotten _back _from our mission yet."

"Oh, no. We're here all week, you can take it easy. And, you know, considering a couple things you said..." He laughed, knowing that was probably most of why she asked.

"Look, I'm not going to take anything back," she said after a long gulp of her draft. "But I hope you won't take the attitude into account when it comes down to performance review time. At least be aware that you see the worst of it, you know?"

"Right, because it's personal."

She rolled her eyes, not quite wanting him to take it that way. "I think I have valid reasons for complaining. I just...am aware that I could be more respectful about it sometimes, but...I did meet you in a fucking bar when you were three sheets to the wind, sir, it's hard to remember sometimes that you outrank me."

She added a lazy salute to her evidently tipsy rambling, and he laughed shortly. "You know, you've been cussing a lot more since we got here."

"...Really?"

"Yeah. And you know, I don't wanna say anything about it, but...You are pretty serious. And not even like sexy-serious, like..._fuck_. It wouldn't kill you to li—"

"Don't say it."

"Lighten up," he said with enunciation, and she glared. "What? Oh, you must get that a lot. Gee, I wonder the fuck why."

She actually seemed a bit bothered by it, moving her lips like she had a nasty taste in her mouth that was_ Jim Kirk might have a point_.

"And this is advice I'm dispensing for practical reasons, by the way. Cause you're way too straight-laced for this rather awry gig we're stuck in."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm saying you don't fit in," he said with a laugh. "At _all_. You're lecturing me about being too nice? 'Excuse me, Chekov. Could you pass the salt shaker?'"

He was quoting her with a mockingly dainty voice, and her expression tightened, in recollection of the death glare that had gotten her from the young ensign who generally kept very acidly to himself. "I didn't know you heard that. Look, I just forgot for a second. I got out of character...It's weird to expect it from _Pavel_, of all people."

"And look, when Nurse Qureshi fell off the transporter pad and broke his nose the other day and everybody was joking about it, that was the most pathetic fake laugh I have ever heard."

"Well, excuse me if I can't find things like that funny," she responded with an annoyed gesture.

"Oh, fine." Jim gave a resigned motion. "Get agonized. See if I care."

She let out an aggravated sigh before she tipped and finished off her second drink.

"Look, just: Give me a nice, good _evil _laugh," Jim said. "Just let one go. I wanna see if you can actually do it."

"I can do it."

"I don't believe you."

Uhura conveyed a comical amount of uncertain meditation on it after setting her beer glass down and wiping a drip of the alcohol off her chin. She obviously felt a little ridiculous, but she tossed her head back and let a few cough-like snickers out.

Jim blinked, his teeth showing. "That was utterly pathetic, Uhura."

"Okay, wait..." After a scoff, she tried again, in a throatier depth that came out so thoroughly cartoonish that Jim waved a hand out to interrupt her.

"Oh God, stop, stop, _stop_. Wow, Lieutenant, I think my kitten just ran for cover."

"Oh, shut up..."

"Look. You gotta really hack up the _shadenfreude_. Can't you just, like, imagine something terrible happening to somebody you really don't like?"

He could just tell by the look on her face that she had no imagination for these things; sitting back, he pondered and pondered, and then got a slow smile on his face.

"Alright. I think this will do it. Remember the stupid Lab Fair they had every year back at the Academy?"

Hey eyes kind of lit up in amusement. "Oh my God, I _loved_ the Lab Fair. It was so lame, but my friends and I went every year."

"Yeah, and remember in the middle when the local Health club had their show with the musical sequence, and the..."

"The big stupid creepy costumes that all looked like internal organs, that danced around? That part was ridiculous." She suddenly remembered something, and laughed. "Oh, and I remember one year...Matthews got drunk and threw his ice cream bar at the kidney, and it _stuck_, and it stayed there through the whole song and we were laughing so hard we almost peed ourselves."

"Yes. I know."

"Though I could have sworn I never saw you at any of the fairs..."

"Oh, you saw me."

"Wait." She sat up, disbelieving and slow to smile. "_No_."

"Yes."

"No, what—? No, there is _no_ way you would..." Her hands were coming up to her mouth in disbelief.

"Let's just say that Admiral Byaka suddenly acquires a sense of humor when he's handing out disciplinary reprimands for sleeping in class."

It didn't exactly work, because in another second as the mental image came back to her, the laugh that came skidding out was a prostrating giggling affair, her shoulders shaking where she was bent forward over the bar, letting her hair droop forward until she tucked it behind her ears, attempted to contain herself before losing it again.

"Oh my God. Oh my God. How many people know this?" she finally managed to say.

"Pretty much the good old admiral, and you. And I would kind of prefer if it stayed that way."

She had her elbows on the table now, wiping her eyes and still laughing slightly. "_Haah_," she sighed happily.

Jim just shook his head somewhere in between cringing and smiling. "I'm gonna go take a leak."

When he was grateful to get out of the eerie half-lit bathroom, one glance back at the bar made his shoulders sink in annoyance.

Sulu was now standing leaning his back against the bar next to her, seeming quite indifferent to her stiff forward-focused poise that should have very clearly looked liked _Back the hell off_. As he came back up to the bar, she was playing with the cherry in the cocktail she'd just ordered, wearing a blank look while the man still tried to sweet-talk all over her.

"Lieutenant," Jim said coolly as he came up closer, cocking a slightly playful eyebrow. "Is this guy bothering you?"

Uhura looked over and it took a couple seconds before her face softened in a realization of what he was doing. She smiled knowingly. The exclusive joke was a comfort, a way of removing themselves from the scene: "...Beyond belief. But it's nothing I can't handle."

He snickered, managed to nudge through next to Sulu to grab his drink back up. Keeping up the little game, he said, "So, you're a cadet, you're stunning. What's your focus?"

"Xenolinguistics," Nyota recited with amusement. "You have no idea what that means."

"The study of alien languages, morphology, phrenology, syntax?" He took a long sip. "It means you've got a talented tongue."

She let out a short laugh as the exchange came to a pause, scratching her hair out of her face. "Damn it, what did I...?"

"Well. You were impressed," Jim gladly provided. "And then you said that you'd thought I was just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals."

"...I did not."

"Yes," Jim insisted broadly, his eyebrows rising, "you did."

"You two lovebirds wanna shut the fuck up?"

Jim's glance veered over to Sulu, looking too slightly astonished to muster quite the affronted reaction it should have been, but it did the job. Sulu put a sort of apologetic gesture to him.

"No offense, Captain, I just didn't _realize_, you know? Though I should have figured, since she's been acting so fucking weird lately."

"Weird?" Jim said, as if demanding clarification, and when Uhura gave him a severe look that just said _Let it go_, his looked briefly like he was asking her if she was seriously going to stand there and just take this shit.

"I mean, I guess it explains a lot, right? Supposedly she's the best translator the Empire has to offer, but who knows how she really got the job." Sulu had been hunched over the bar in a cloud of bitter mockery, not looking over as he spoke, but he looked directly at Jim for just a second before he flippantly added, "Why don't you give somebody else a turn with that mouth?"

Jim's expression was a blankness, a couple blinks of the eye, when he looked over to see Nyota's face fall before she just tried to get back to stirring her drink.

His glass made a clean and loud clunk against the bar where he set it down. Her eyes widened.

"_Jim_—"

But he was already turning from the bar, snatching and jerking Sulu with him by the collar and quickly shoving up the momentum to slam his back against a small table before he landed a swift punch across his cheek that sent him tripping down with the table. Sulu didn't fall all the way and came fuming back already revved for a fight, accompanied by the noises of half the bar catching onto the stirrings with excited astonishment. Uhura was slamming out of her seat in an attempt to get past the crowd already thickening around the scuffle.

Bets were already being shouted, particularly among the crew members, and it seemed to only take seconds for the fight to make it to a rolling scramble on the floor: Jim had Sulu down and chucked a couple hard punches before the helmsman wriggled and sifted enough to get him slipped off of him, kicking an imprecise but effective knock and then a blow that bent him back only briefly, but a bottle that had fallen off the table met Jim's hand and in a second came slamming to the other's temple.

A noise-thirsty slew of the crowd was chanting Jim's last name, eating up the slight scandal as the violence became more lethal. Once quickly recovered, Sulu seared into a bitterly vicious presence that seemed to elevate Jim's rage in a purely instinctive, defensive reaction, before an awkward series of half-ineffectual hooks resulted from the attempts to get the higher ground on the other. It was finally Sulu who managed to get back up, loosely punch Jim back to the floor, and land a hard bite to the captain's gut with his boot.

With a minute yelp Jim was cringing and coiling in and gasping for air when his collar was roughly pulled up, Sulu's fist reaching back ready to mark more damage; but then a tug: His head was wrenched back by an angular grasp at his hair. A knife appeared at his neck.

The threatening proximity of the dagger guided the now seething Sulu to back up, until he was nearly on his back, yielding under Uhura's tightly crouched form.

"Hey. _Sugar_." Her voice was low and cold. "Looks like you dropped something."

Off at the side Jim was coughing back to lucidity, sitting up. She inched the knife just a bit closer to Sulu's neck, watched the officer's eyes burn a furious and squirming look back at her for another few seconds.

And then she leaned back a bit, tilting her head thoughtfully before she broke out into a grin. She started laughing down at Sulu as if some kind of joke was up. And with only a hint of lingering unease, he slowly fell into an imitation of her snickering. The crowd accepted the end of the brawl, some with boredom and some with whoops and applause.

Leaving Sulu with a sharp smirk, she quickly got back up, made a little taunting twiddling motion with his knife before tucking it down into her boot, adjusting her skirt, and walking away.

When she passed by Kirk with a steadier look, she was no longer smiling.

.

.

.

Ten minutes later she was grabbing his hand down to shove an ice pack into it, smacking it back up in his grasp against the colorful bruise clouding over his right eye.

"Ow," he mumbled.

After sternly avoiding really looking at him the whole time she'd pulled his ass all the way to her quarters before he could do something stupid like _ actually go to medical bay_ on this nightmare of a ship, she turned on him with a frustrated motion like she was shaking water off her hands.

"What the _hell_ were you thinking!?"

"I wasn't thinking, Lieutenant, for Christ sake, I _said_ already—"

"He's probably forgoing organized mutiny and just needs a good way to murder you in your sleep now—"

"—I'm _sorry_! Okay?...Fuck." He drew the ice pack back to test the feel of his blackening eye with a wince. In a more resigned, lowly irritated mutter he added, "I'm gonna ask you something. No—I'm not."

"...What?"

"No."

Impatiently curious, she said, "Ask me."

She was taking her jewelry off over at her dresser. He had an audible squinting uncertainty in the question: "I don't know, just. Why did you accept a position on _Enterprise_?"

Her motions slowed, and Jim shook his head.

"Nevermind."

"What?" was all she could say as she turned around to look straight at him.

He scoffed. "Look, we both know, that even without getting into whatever the hell is personal, you have a lot of problems with me. You don't like my style of command, and I'm pretty sure you've known that since day one. Sometimes, I don't know, I'm just kind of dreading the day I get that transfer request. I'd feel pretty bad if I drove you off a ship where you're practically close to everybody, but I'm the _captain_ and it's—"

"Are you trying to drop a _hint_ or something?" Uhura had her arms crossed now.

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm just trying to tell you that I know how it is."

"Well, you always think you know how it is." She turned away to let her hair out of its pins, a blunt cue that the conversation was ended. After a minute, she saw him sliding a compact mirror from the compartment in the nightstand to examine the damage, and she went over to where he was sitting on the bed as he was putting it away.

"It looks pretty bad," she observed with flat sympathy.

He cringed, his features bending back into their annoyance and fury for a brief spell. "Such an asshole," he said, something withheld in his voice.

"You done?" She offered to take the ice, and he handed it to her. She leaned just a bit to pick up a glass from earlier that day from the nightstand and threw the ice pack in it, picked up and tucked a PADD under her arm, leaned down again to kiss him on his right cheek, and went to go take a bath.

He was still fumbling to process it when she was at the door to the bathroom. He demanded after her, "What was that for?"

"You know what for," was her response just before the door slid closed after her.

.

.

.

Nyota was wearing pajama pants when they snuck under the radar to go talk to McCoy once it was almost the middle of the night, winding past a couple dirty empty cells to find him in a surprisingly accommodating mood. He didn't even inquire as to what happened to the captain's face, just boredly let them explain this mythical plan they were hatching to actually get him out of there.

Jim was squinting at the limp coiled figure of a man lying in the corner whose mouth was hanging open, several feet away from Bones.

"Is he..._dead_?"

As if on cue a mumble of a moan came from the body, making Jim and Nyota flinch back in unison before the man went silent and still again. McCoy looked over and said, "That's Paulson. In for attempted mutiny. He sleeps a lot."

"So are you...you know," Nyota asked, "okay in here?" She looked around her with vague unease as she said it.

"Well. They keep threatening to torture me, but I'm starting to think it's just their way of saying hello. It's a lot less boring in the middle of the day when the guards argue. It's practically an old sitcom in here, really." The doctor was sitting against the wall opposite the bars, resting his arms on his knees. "And the food's not terrible."

Slowly, as if trying to do so covertly, Jim and Nyota looked at each other, blinking.

"So..." McCoy gave a casual shrug. "What have you guys been doing?"

Chewing on a bite of the replicated fruit they'd brought to share, Nyota looked away from Jim, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.


	2. 2 of 2

"Not the optronic, the _duotronic_!"

Jim's hands were spread in the air over a mess of Scotty's toolbox, daintily reaching as if the man would have an outburst the very second he touched another wrong tool. "I mean, they kind of look similar, right? The couplers—"

"Well, now I understand your mistake," Scotty yelled from where he was spread under the power console. "Except that they look nothing alike."

Jim met eyes with Uhura who was tightly trying not to laugh, grimacing in a mix of exasperation and amusement. Scratching the back of his neck, he said, "Listen, are you sure you can't get away from here for just a little bit?"

Scotty just gave out a long sigh, almost not bothering to say anything. "Bring me back a souvenir, 'ey?"

"Are we really going back to the bar again?" Uhura groaned when they were in the corridor, but her unwillingness was almost simply boredom this time.

"I'm not making you do anything," he said with a huff of a laugh.

"Yes, but you have that pout..."

"Nope." He covered his mouth. "There. Pouting neutralized. I am disarmed."

But it was—with the assumption of a successful retrieval of McCoy followed by a successful transporter miracle, knock on wood—their last night in the horrible place, so why not? She even had a preferred beer at the bar by now. She was on her third drink by the time they'd been there a couple hours, her and Jim having escaped to a not particularly luxurious but very empty back patio area with a wooden bench. And she was giggling at something when she stopped herself.

"Are we having fun?" she asked in horror. With their t-shirts and the reasonably comfortable jeans she'd found at the bottom of her drawer (somewhere under the blessed uniform pants she'd found which were way too tight-fitting but at least _pants_) it really felt like shore leave.

Jim moved his mouth around in consideration. "One of my closest friends is stuck in the slam, our engineer is getting three hours of sleep a night ensuring we are not exiled for eternity in bizarro-land..."

"And we're screwing around."

"Well, you can't blame me this time."

"No," she said. After a minute of examining her glass, she sighed. "You know what. I am_ very _homesick. I don't get like that, but..."

"Heh. Well, I'd take Iowa over this rock, but I can't really say the same."

"Sure you can. I don't mean...I mean the _Enterprise_."

"...Oh." Jim blinked, and gave a self-conscious shrug as she looked over.

There was a pause before she sighed slightly grudgingly and said, "I took the position when you offered it because I didn't care as much as you might think about being among the best crew in Starfleet. If I'm going to be spending years on a ship with the same crew, what I care about is being with the best _people_."

He was giving her a squinting, not quite offended look and realizing, "Wait. You expected us to bomb. No, you expected _me_ to bomb..."

"I don't know that I expected it to be a disaster; at that point it was all pretty unpredictable, and I think the entire crew was really into that. And you seem to think that I don't like your style of command, but the thing is you're really the only captain who _has_ a style of command. Maybe you get on my nerves, but this crew isn't really lacking in personality, so maybe they need someone like you. And by the way, I was lucky." She gave a shrug. "The best people also turned out to make the best damn crew in the entire Federation, and I am just as proud to be a part of it as you are, so you can take your transfer requests and—"

"Thank you," Jim interrupted, an awkward smile on his face, clearing his throat as if to get past the simple lack of smugness in his current state.

"You know, you're not that bad," she observed, "when you're one of the only people I know."

Jim snickered. "Well, you've always got our friends upstairs..."

"Isn't it kind of weird how McCoy's handling everything?" Uhura asked with a laugh threatening to break out.

And Jim grinned, like it was something he'd forgotten to bring up. "Oh my God. Thing is, that's just Bones. His whole neurosis makes you think he'll be a wreck in these situations, but when the shit really hits the fan, that's when he's kind of in his element, you know?"

"It's almost like—Our McCoy really belongs here and—"

"What, and they got the nice one?" And it wasn't that funny, really, but they didn't recover for some minutes from laughing so long until their stomachs ached.

"So, tell me." Uhura finally composed herself to ask, "How are things with _Marlena_?"

"_Oh_," he groaned. "Her and the other me, it must be pretty serious. In their own definition, of course, I don't even know..."

She gave something like a snort.

"We have a tribble," he whined. "And it's _mean_."

Snickering again, she shook her head almost sympathetically. "So have you just been faking headaches all week or what? You know, she has been giving me some _looks_, though..."

"Well, gossip's over warp 10 anywhere you go."

Uhura shook her head again and gave out a kind of shudder of annoyance.

"What, are you _concerned_ about your reputation, when it's not even yours?" Jim challenged. "I mean, all things considered. It doesn't _matter_..."

"I just feel like you're going to use it as some kind of fodder after we get back, that's all."

"Use what? That it seems possible that some screwed-up versions of ourselves may have done the deed once or twice? I have a better sense of humor than that." He rolled his eyes over a sip of beer. "I mean, look at it this way. Wouldn't it be worse if some perversion of an existing relationship seemed to be going on here? Like if it was somebody you actually loved." He cut himself off at the last with a comically twisting expression of how _that_ sounded, and Uhura's face was equally uncomfortable.

"Hey look, I don't—"

Putting out a hand and laughing awkwardly, he tried to interrupt, "No, you don't have to—"

"I don't, like..._un_-love you."

Jim nearly spit out his beer laughing. He even clapped his hands a few times. "Oh my God. Did my top-notch communications officer just say 'un-love'?"

"I'm drunk, okay?"

"You're killing me, Lieutenant. God, look at those two. I think they're about to take it to the cage, what do you think?"

She tilted over, also having noticed the two pugnacious men who had just made a racket near the back door. "Hmm. I think Scrawny's got the passion on his side, he looks like somebody just insulted his mother."

"No. No way, he's getting pounded."

He slowly turned his head as he sensed an expectant look on Uhura's face. She smiled in an _Am I really about to say this?_ way. "If Big Boy loses, you're sleeping in your quarters tonight."

"Yeah?"

"And if he wins, I'll take the floor."

For a second he looked like he was going to be too much of a gentleman, shrug off the offer. But then he reached his hand out for a shake. "You are _on_."

They caught their share of stares when Uhura had convinced Jim to let her sit on his shoulders to see over the crowd despite his repeated bitching of "You're not even that short!" But when the fight riled up they were clumsily bouncing in their cacophony of opposite enthusiasms until she practically fell off of him. But they managed to get close enough to the cage to get in a loud cursing turn of spectating before Big Boy pounded surrender on the mat floor. Uhura was lifting her arms and crowing shrilly right in Jim's face, and it was very out of character and completely adorable, so he couldn't really be a sore loser.

"You _are_ drunk," he concurred with her expired comment as they left the transporter room later. "You better not be hungover tomorrow."

"I never get hungover."

"Yeah, you wouldn't. You're just magical like that."

Letting out a stifled laugh, she shoved his arm. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I'm going to go read in bed. Next to my uncomfortably attractive not-girlfriend."

"Hey." She stopped walking next to him, thinking through something. "Everything's going to be okay, right?"

"Nobody has any reason to use the transporters for all of tomorrow afternoon," Jim recited. "I have a perfectly good alibi for yanking Bones out of the brig, even if it's suspicious, nobody important is going to catch on until we're long gone, I swear. Security guards don't ask shit, trust me."

He'd been assuring everybody else of this already. She sighed, nodded her head. "I know...I'm not that worried about it."

"I'm kind of freaking out, actually."

"Really?"

He cocked an eyebrow, mock-enigmatic and cocky, then laughed. "No."

She just rolled her eyes and turned to walk off, not knowing whether he was kidding.

With a little snicker he called with a drawn-out sweetness, "Nighty-night."

.

.

.

Uhura woke to the comm bell at 0600, blinking away a surprisingly good rest, checking the chronometer and sitting up.

"Huh?" she answered.

"We are so _fucked_."

"Scotty? Oh God, what happened?"

"Did you just wake up?" he asked, his voice frantic. "There's a fucking mutiny on and you're asleep."

Then she snapped out of bed. "_What._"

"Yeah. The captain's been thrown in the brig—somebody was monitoring all the computer activities, thought that our research looked suspicious—'course they're just using it as a reason to lock him up, they don't seem to really care—But if we're aiming for the window I'm still knee-deep in warp chords for the next—"

"Jim's in the brig!?" Uhura nearly screamed, her eyes going wide as they checked the time again. She was pacing, snatching up her uniform and undressing as she went. "We're on in _thirty minutes_, Scotty!"

"_I know_."

"Okay, okay, just—_Oonf_!" She grunted as she fell over trying to wrestle into one of her mile-high boots. "Keep doing what you're doing, stay focused on getting us that window, I'll—God, I'll comm you when I know what's going on."

It was easy enough to guess who had probably jumped on the opportunity to bring on trouble, but she knew she couldn't fool herself into thinking there was anybody who had any loyalty to the captain anyway. It was a gamble, but it left her only one option.

After a frantically impatient wait on the turbolift, she sprung into a quick pace on deck C, scanning around the labs until she spotted the shapely brunette with those deceivingly innocent big doe eyes, her hair bouncing as she only passingly looked up at Uhura's approach.

Continuing with her work, Lieutenant Marlena Moreau offhandedly muttered, "Aren't you supposed to be on the bridge?" Her voice was like ice and honey at the same, sweet and deliberate.

"Aren't you, I don't know, a little upset that your captain is in line to test the new airlock seals?" Uhura demanded, matching if not surpassing the other's coldness.

"I think you should know better than anyone," she said without looking up, but with a lift of her eyebrows, "that he's not really my captain anymore."

Uhura's head knocked back as she let out a long groan. She made a gesture of trying to calm herself down, finally catching Moreau's direct glance as she insisted, "Look. I am _not_ sleeping with him."

"Oh, please," Moreau said. "All your little hang-outs on shore leave? You know, on top of the fact that he's turned down sex every single night this week—"

Uhura interrupted her with an incredulous little laugh at her frankness, resolving quickly to return it: "Look, the CMO's in the brig, it's perfectly likely he's having..._issues_. He's got a lot on his mind, it happens..."

"Did you really come down here to chat with me about the possibility of the captain having _erectile dysfunction_?"

"Okay, so, say that the captain and I are involved in this torrid affair, despite the fact that there's no room for promotion and it does no good for me, okay; and this just happens to be perfect for Sulu and Chekov's little agenda because they need you to play along by being too pissed off at him to try to do anything about it...?"

There was a new glint in Moreau's eyes, and Uhura was surprised to see she'd struck something. She gave Uhura a pursed, tense look.

"He was the one who brought it up to me," Moreau admitted.

"Sulu."

"Yeah." And suddenly they were shaking their heads at each other like two scowling slighted wives. She added, "The fucker."

"Okay, this is what I need you to do," Uhura said. "Since you're supposedly not a sympathizer, you can go down to the brig, pretend you're going to kick dust in his face or whatever. And slip him this."

She handed her a communicator. Moreau looked at it uncertainly. "And then what?"

"I don't know, hopefully he's got half of a plan already. That's why I _need_ you to do this, alright? And I need to get out of here before any of the wrong people see us talking."

She walked off, hoping the quick end to the conversation would decrease Moreau's likelihood to overthink her way back into suspicion. She just held the communicator she'd linked to the other and Scotty's close in her grasp.

She was stepping through the corridors so anxiously that she ended up rounding a corner right into a tall solid body, practically stumbling back from the brief collision with a small sense of panic, hoping she hadn't offended anyone's dogged impatience. Instead she quickly realized it was Spock, and an unease came into her features as she steadied herself against the wall. But the too-familiar-looking Vulcan hardly gave her a blink before walking around her, looking like he had rather pressing matters to attend to.

"Lieutenant?"

Her eyes widened in response to the tiny voice on the communicator. "Captain," she hissed back in relief.

"Did I ever tell you how completely in love with you I am?"

"_Later_, Jim!—"

"Listen, this is what you have to do," he immediately instructed. "Go talk to Spock."

She looked around, stole into a small unoccupied maintenance room and then spoke louder into the communicator. "I'm sorry, did you seriously just tell me to—"

"Please, please, believe me. The guy might help because he doesn't want command."

"Doesn't want—Oh, come _on_."

"Look, we've been talking and I've been feeling him out all week, and he's basically just Spock with a very different definition of what's logical. And for him, being second-in-command is a very powerful and very _safe_ place to be in."

She had her hand up wiping her still morning-frazzled hair out of her eyes, letting out a long dubious sigh that Jim could definitely hear.

"Lieutenant?" he prodded. "Please try?"

She kind of shrugged, then clipped off, "If it's an order, it's an order."

"Oh, don't be like that..."

But she'd said her last, already heading back out into the corridor with her comm turned down. She asked the computer to locate the commander and was told he was the only person in the observation deck.

When she quietly entered the deck a few minutes later she found him standing looking out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Like some old film villain standing at a fireplace, she couldn't help observing. She found she was biting her bottom lip in dry amusement at this, and then jumped back in a short gasp when the commander spoke and only completed the picture by seemingly already knowing it was her standing there.

"Lieutenant, I would very much appreciate if you would clarify what happened to the landing party last week," Spock said smoothly, his measured tone colored with one of impatience that she wasn't used to hearing. He only then turned around, fixing her with an expectant glance that left her unsure of whether she should feel uneasy about him.

Uhura found she didn't know where to begin, so he interrupted.

"The decidedly unorthodox research that has been uncovered with the ship's computers which was brought to my attention earlier suggests several possibilities, one of which would explain the rather...erratic behavior the captain has been displaying as of late."

"Yeah, so," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Jim blew it."

"It was not until earlier today that I suspected there was in fact a problem with all four of you, and not only—"

"So are you and Kirk pretty much besties? Everywhere?" she asked, squinting in her half-sarcasm. "Because you might want to worry about what's probably going to happen to him if this mutiny is successful, which it will be if you're just shut in here...What are you actually doing in here?"

Spock gave a patiently slow look off to the side. "I am enjoying a view of the Golden Tassel nebula, and avoiding being in the way, Lieutenant."

With a wince she argued, "But if you don't want command, why wouldn't you value a better captain, I mean—"

"Captain Kirk is only a more ideal captain because he is taller than Sulu and therefore more likely to block something from hitting me," the commander said. "The captaincy is as a rule quite inconstant aboard this ship, a fact I might expect you to have realized from your year of service, Lieutenant."

Those last words were heavily suggestive, and she had her lips pressed together before she quietly replied, "Unless I don't have a year of service here."

With a familiar tilt of his head, she almost expected something like "Fascinating" to come out of his mouth, but instead he stepped farther forward, reached his hand up...

"_Woah_." She batted his arm away at the wrist, shaking her head in a scolding way without really thinking about it. "Nuh-uh, no."

Clearly, the concept of consent as a complication of mind melds was something foreign to him: She couldn't decide whether he looked terrifyingly angered or more like a little kid that had had its toy taken away. He sort of looked down at his hand and back up again, confused and considering, and she just went with not feeling threatened because it seemed to have worked so far.

"Look, we don't have time to explain things to you, and you just need to trust that we need to get to the transporter room so we can get out of here. There has to be something you can do to help us, unless you want to lose four members of your crew—"

"I have no desire to die," he interrupted simply. "And they will attempt to kill me. This is not a complicated explanation for my refusal to offer assistance."

Taking in and letting out a frustrated breath, she turned to leave, already preparing to ask Jim what the hell she should do now.

"However," Spock said slowly, from where he was returning his eyes to their examination of the yellowy nebula, "should one of you somehow become aware that a set of powerful firearms are hidden in the locked department of the desk in the captain's quarters, I see no reason that that should have anything to do with me."

With her eyes just now widened a bit, her stance frozen for a second, she hesitated and then swiftly continued her way out of the room.

.

.

.

McCoy was pacing.

"And here I was so impressed with you for being chill under pressure," Kirk was saying from where he sat against the wall with his glance lazily turned to the ceiling. He was clasping the communicator up to his ear where it was hidden behind that stupid badass leather cuff thing he had on, wishing he just had a damn sleeve to slip it under. He sighed. "Bones, stop it."

"Stop _what_? Freaking out over the fact that a wrench the size of Texas just got thrown into any semblance of a plan we had?" Bones demanded a bit too loudly with a half-stomping halt. "Man, what is she _doing_?"

"_Shh_. Jesus, Bones—" The tiniest hiss of a masculine tone came from the communicator, and he spoke into it. "What's your progress?"

McCoy looked down expectantly, unable to hear the other voice at such a low volume.

"Okay, we just. We just need to...get there. No, we don't know where she is cause—Well, I'm busy talking to _you_ right now—"

"—even _touch_ that fucking comm button I'm gonna blow your brains all over this deck."

The rising noise of that half-unheard threat made McCoy and Kirk shift up and over, wide-eyed, trying to see what was happening at the entrance to the brig.

"_Yes_sir, I understand, but—"

"Open up the cell." There was a tapping noise of impatience. "Come _on_, are you—!?"

"I—I don't know how, they changed the codes in case people wanted to be loyal, look, I got nothing against the captain, I just—"

There was a drawn-out little roar of exasperation. "Fine. Go hide in the closet or something, I better not see your face again."

"Yes, ma'am," came the nearly matter-of-fact reply laced with surprise that she was even letting him get off that easy.

When she appeared where they could see her just outside the cell, Uhura took in the look of them as if getting her bearings on the situation. Then she said, "Back up."

Jim realized what she was doing and yanked McCoy back with him before a crackling short blast blew into dust around the door, happening so fast that they were blinking through the thin cloud before they realized the barred door was loose enough to kick open.

"Thank you, Uhura," Jim said in a flat and official tone, which was somewhat overthrown with the added "You're officially a badass."

"Uhura, what—" McCoy was squinting incredulously. "What are those?"

Also taking in the _very_ large weapons, one of which Uhura had just used while the other was slung by a strap holster over her shoulder, Jim let out a sort of giddy noise of uncertainty.

"They're Kirk's, apparently. Spock tipped me off. And before you ask, yes." She nodded at Kirk knowingly. "They can go automatic."

"Oh shit oh shit..." Jim reached for the other one as she handed it over, turning the bulky thing over and over trying to get a feel for all the settings. McCoy went a little wide-eyed and grabbed at the barrel.

"You wanna watch where you're pointing the damn phaser bazooka?"

"Safety's on, but I cant figure out—Do you know if it has a stun setting?" Jim asked Uhura. She just shrugged with a defeated look, like she hadn't been able to figure it out for sure. Clearly neither of them were eager to go taking out members of a crew they recognized from their daily lives, even in self-defense.

Jim was still fiddling with the thing when they heard "It's the green one, man. On the side."

"Oh." Jim smiled. "Thanks, Paulson."

"Where's Scotty?" Uhura asked, half-reaching for her communicator. "I haven't—"

"He's ready to go. We just all need to get to the transporter room without it looking obvious that's where we're going. Cause if they cut off that power we're screwed."

They all thought about that with unsure expressions, McCoy finally saying, "What would they actually expect you to do?"

"I don't know. We're stopping a mutiny, supposedly, so we'd need to start making some ugly examples of all Sulu's friends. But we don't really know who those people are, besides anyone who tries to stop us from...from whatever we're doing."

They let out little sighs of heavy scrutiny; Uhura's arms were crossed over her chest in thought as she exchanged expectant looks with both the others.

Finally Jim made a dismissive motion, putting on a _What the hell_ kind of look. "Alright, let's just shoot our way over there."

"Oh, this is _hip_," McCoy grumbled.

"Bones," Jim began with a look at the two weapons that were resting on the floor in front of them. "What was your score on the final simulations again?"

McCoy just guffawed.

"Uhura?"

"Oh." She neutrally replied, "Thirty-nine."

"So she'll—" Jim's face whipped over in Uhura's direction. He demanded, "_Thirty-nine_?!"

With a not very confident grimace, she assured, "I was never that good in practice. I'm just—I mean, I'm a good test taker, you know?"

"Motherf—" Jim cut off his instinctive cursing, just bit out, "You_ tied _with me at final sims, that was _you_? That instructor swore I'd get a perfect but I was hungover that day, _God_, I'm_ still_ fucking irritated about that."

"Oh, poor, poor Jim," McCoy said with a roll of his eyes. "Can we work on getting the hell out of here?"

Uhura had already sort of hesitantly went for one of the guns, while Kirk took the other.

"Alright," Jim declared, "we should be all feral and demanding, make a lot of noise, be scary enough and nobody will bother wondering what the hell we're doing."

.

.

.

"Be cool. _Be cool_. Don't _move_!"

Apparently too panicked to really take in what Uhura was yelling, the first lone security officer that spotted Kirk walking through the hall had a moment of nervous indecision before pulling out his phaser. Nyota raised up her rifle and pulled the trigger, evoking a jolting snap of a blast that more or less bitch-slapped him into unconsciousness with a pretty huge beam.

"_Woah_," Jim exclaimed. "These must knock you out like beer before liquor..."

"How dumb could these people be?" McCoy exclaimed on their way galloping to the turbolifts.

"I don't think surrender is much of an instinct to them," Jim said. "If we tried—"

His voice cut off as he gave Uhura a warning yank on the arm, being the first to see somebody come around the corner as if she'd been hiding there, and plucking the officer off with a quick blast before she realized she'd been spotted. They waited while McCoy helped himself to the security-issue phaser and then were running again, packing themselves into the first turbolift and smacking the button to close the door.

"We can't do turbolifts the whole way—"

"You're right," Jim said in agreement with Nyota. "We should get off before they have the chance to trap us between decks, but I'll give it at least a few."

"So we have to get to the ladders?" McCoy asked with a wince.

"Never thought I'd wish for stairs on a starship," Jim said dryly. "They're just splendid for shooting."

"Yeah," Uhura smiled. "Remember that one setting we weren't tested on, with the spiral staircase—"

"Oh, that was _fun_, wasn't it?"

"If only we'd had the class together, I'd know whether I could really take out more than you can."

Jim blinked, and slowly looked over at the communications officer.

"Lieutenant."

"Captain?" she replied almost demurely.

"Are we competing?"

She looked like her instinct was to roll her eyes at the suggestion. But then she muttered, "Well, it would make it feel like a test..."

Then the doors hissed to a stop where Jim had commanded them to, and phasers were held at the ready. They pulled silently around the walls with quick checks down both corridors. When they were paused in the momentarily quiet section of the deck, Uhura mumbled, "I never thought about how everything being so round isn't very good for stealth?"

"I was thinking the same thing," the captain replied with an annoyed contemplation of the gradual curve of the hall that had little opportunity for something to actually duck or hide behind. "You know what? You've got the better ears..."

"Okay." Uhura bravely nodded and peeled around in front before Jim could ask gently, and they began their brisk walk down towards the ladder entrance, keeping to the rounder wall. Kirk covered the thresholds as they passed, while McCoy kept checking behind them.

They were only a few rooms away from the hull surfaces when a bustling cluster of voices came up, doubtlessly a group emerging from one of the smaller rec rooms, and now coming towards them.

Jim muttered, "Uhura, can you—?"

"Six," she said, and sure enough it was that exact amount that appeared around the bend; she was already aiming and taking down the far right officer, spurring an outburst of motion from the rest. Jim snapped off two of them in a row while Uhura took out a second; the last one had actually ducked behind the nearest computer console to get out his phaser. There was an expectant pause as all four waited with weapons wielded, one that became long, and then nearly ridiculous.

"You know we're only stunning?" Kirk yelled.

"Fuck yourself, Kirk!"

Jim made a noise of impatience, gave a motion to Uhura, and then took a direct stomping approach to the console; no sooner had the man appeared aiming at Jim than he'd gone straight to the floor under Nyota's fire.

"So we split that one?" Jim joked as they took off at fuller speed now, McCoy making it to the compartment door first and wrenching it open. He was still in the process of getting onto the ladder when Uhura gave some warning whisper and they all then heard the pattering approach of very purposeful steps. Jim hissed, "Go go go go..."

It became an awkward writhing process of rushing through the uncomfortably placed entrance to negotiate the leg space between the ladder and the wall beneath, but they all got in and shut the compartment behind them, hopefully before anyone saw them.

"What now?" McCoy demanded as he started crawling up and up, followed by Jim and Uhura who had to try not to bang the weapons too loudly against the wall.

"Up," Kirk replied simply. "And...if nothing happens first, just get off as close to the transporter room as possible."

"This ladder is so far to starboard, though," Uhura groaned.

"I know." Jim just said, "Faster, Bones?"

They made it up to E deck and listened closely until they were as sure as they could ever be that nobody was directly outside, and then quickly kicked out of the compartment, awkwardly wielding as quickly as possible. With McCoy crawling out first, he made it out standing and nervously checking around, and Uhura was up above Jim almost out of the gap when he heard McCoy yell, "Ah _shit_!"

Before he knew it, Uhura had taken up the arm that was hoisting her out in order to direct and shoot with her gun, which had resulted in a horrifyingy haphazard sideways lock of her legs atop Jim's shoulders; he was exclaiming a muffled "_Mmmhmph!_...hurr!" and she was yelling at him to help her up already, for God's sake, while he scrabbled with the impossible task of doing this without _touching anything_, for _Christ_ sake, but dammit she was probably winning their little game up there with only the upper half of her body, so he settled for a firm push up on her thighs; she came spilling up a bit faster with the help of a quick yank on the arm by McCoy, who helped her from tripping to the floor. Jim ducked out and looked, started shooting at another cluster of officers that were appearing from down the hall.

"Should we take the long way around?" Uhura asked when he finally had a moment to pull himself out and hit his feet to the floor. He thought about it for a second, and it was really the only hope of a diversion they had now.

"Alright, yeah," he nodded, and they took off, taking speed over stealth now. When another couple officers appeared from hiding behind a threshold it was more of a free-for-all than before, harder to tell who was even shooting down who.

Then when they were halfway to the transporter room, they heard Sulu shouting, along with a building cacophony of other voices, far down in the direction they'd come from. It made the three momentarily look back in a pause of dread.

Kirk was being ironic, of course, when he turned to Uhura and asked, "How many?"

She took in a breath, returning in a similar tone: "A lot."

They gave a look at the nearest storage room as if contemplating trying to hide momentarily, but with a check at the nearest chronometer, Jim just shook his head at the other two, and they started running.

A blast licked just past them that had them flattening to the wall, Jim winding up the farthest back and chucking off an automatic line of fire that made a woodpecking mess of noise; Uhura and McCoy were covering forwards, and finally Jim had taken off enough people to cut back into running, but he said to both of them, "I think they split up. Sulu's probably taking some numbers around to cover the trans room."

McCoy cursed, and Kirk was getting onto the communicator. "Scotty, you're getting company, can you—?"

He cut himself off when a figure neared around, but then he lifted back his gun. It was the first officer, who clearly did not wish to be interrupted from simply heading by them to wherever he was going to mind his own business.

"_You_." Jim immediately walked up to Spock, pointing a finger at him. "You gonna remember what I talked to you about?"

"I told you that I would consider it," he replied almost boredly, and he kept walking. Jim returned his attention to Scotty's voice on the comm line.

"They're surrounding us and the transporter room, I think," he was quickly explaining. "We're totally fucked if we—"

"You're on this floor?" Scotty replied. "You know the shortcut?"

"The—Oh, shit, Scotty, can you access the tank controls where you are?"

"Emptying, sir."

And then in a flinch of motion, Jim walked up to the opposite wall, ticked down a setting on his rifle, and fired off a clean blast into the slightly curved corner at the bottom of the wall.

"Jim, what in the hell!?"

Jim was then stomping and kicking and kicking again, denting in the damaged surface, and when he got through to see what was under he hissed, "_Yes_, yes, it's the same, it's the same." Turning to the doctor who had come up behind him, he pointed at his phaser and said, "Pack it in and hold your breath, Bones."

"_Oh_..." Uhura was wincing in dread but already turning on her safety and making to follow after when Jim smoothly careened his body down to go through the torn hole; he seemed to go falling down a slide-like surface, and the two followed fluidly.

Seconds later the three heavy splashes came before their bodies were swamped under into the cold; water was pushing all around, crystal-clear but heavy and sluggishly pulling them down and farther down, juggling them too thoroughly for anyone to get their bearings of which direction was which.

Just when one of them gave the first bubble-cough of not being able to breathe, a suctiony motion kicked in, with a promising speed to how they were gliding and gliding to the bottom...

When Uhura got to the hole that was about five feet wide, she felt her ankle slap smartly against it just as she was heavily pushed past it, and fell: After a short slapping drop she was painfully knocked on top of a body, and then immediately felt another roll in just next to her as the final splash of escaping water came surging over and out and puddling across the floor.

Jim grunted underneath her as she dug into him to get up and standing. "What was that?" she asked breathlessly. But when she looked up she saw that the side of the tank was labeled "EMERGENCY WATER STORAGE."

"Uh," McCoy harrumphed, after they'd all recovered from slight coughing fits. "So that's where they keep it."

"Pike could never stress it enough," Jim said. "'Know your ship.'"

"That's drinking water?" Uhura asked. She was examining up and down her arms as if she had been worried about the stuff containing any kind of chemical deposits.

"In case of malfunctions, yeah," Jim said as he finally stood up behind the other two, moving as if he might have messed up his back a little landing on his gun. "And we lucked out. You don't wanna know what the other tank on this level has in it. Anyway: Computer, seal tanks."

As the hole they'd just fallen through slid into a locked surface, Uhura grinned. "You need the maintenance lift to get in here?" They all knew that that particular turbolift required a password in case of ship intruders.

"Yeah, and Scotty will have hacked it if his head's on straight," Jim said as they moved across the room and got into the rather cramped turbolift, and slapped the button. He was scrutinizing the way Uhura was walking, and as soon as the door closed McCoy was muttering a question about her ankle.

"It feels like it's fractured," she said with a wince. To Jim she said, "I think I deserve an extra point for that."

He snickered shortly. "Yeah, okay." It was a very short ride up to where they would open to the transporter room, and as it whirred to a stop, he said, "Alright, people. Be very careful about using these guns, we can't be doing a lot of damage."

The door hissed open to reveal, predictably, a number of officers with phasers trained on them. All three of them were ready with their own weapons, and Jim shrugged and stated, "Ours are bigger, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, only we're not stunning like a bunch of little girls. Who's got more to lose?" This all came from Sulu; he was standing across the room, his arms crossed and empty as if he fancied himself already graced with a minion that could spoon-feed him if he wanted. He was right next to a very annoyed Scotty who had a couple phasers trained on him.

Jim's grip flinched for a moment as if he was about to reconsider that thing about stunning, but only flinched.

"Good swim, Captain?"

Sulu rolled his eyes in Scotty's direction briefly before continuing. "It's done, Kirk. Give it up. I don't know what the hell you all thought you were going to do with the transporter, but we're more than eager to beam you right out into the cold..."

Sulu snapped a finger, which was apparently a signal for somebody to hand him a phaser, and he started directly marching over to them. "And why don't we start our bargain with the lovely little communications officer, huh? Put down your weapon, baby. All of you."

There was a pause of irritation before they all complied, the heavier guns going down with grudging throws. Sulu came up and stopped in front of Uhura, his demeanor resembling a gently thoughtful hesitation. But then in a sudden scooping motion he had his hand viced around her arm, started pulling her forward.

Maybe in one of their heads, maybe in Jim's, they had a plan. Maybe one of them was waiting to carry out something that would create a diversion, a threat, something, but however they were _going_ to get out of it, it didn't really matter a couple seconds later.

Sulu's downfall was the entirely unexpected, shrill growl of long-suffering scorn that resulted from his foot clumsily skimming down and stepping on Uhura's ankle. It sent everyone, including Sulu, into the briefest attention limp of confusion, which was long enough for her to land a rather reflexive and furious kick hard into his shin with her perfectly good foot. He buckled over with a doltish shout, she kicked his phaser out of his hands so that it went skidding over to where Jim or McCoy could easily get it, and the two of them had already managed to snatch up their weapons again during the distraction and fire off a few clean blasts to knock out a good enough handful of Sulu's aids for the rest to drop their weapons in surrender.

After a second of backing up and regaining her calm, Uhura turned with a considering look. And she cut a hard punch right into Sulu's face.

A second later he was phased and unconscious, and Uhura was pushing her hair behind her ears, groaning in annoyance, finally looking at the flustered officers that were left and saying, "What the hell are you all looking at?"

They cast looks at each other.

"_Back to work_, or it's the agony booth," Kirk shouted, playing along. "Playtime's over."

Clearly completely astonished that they weren't being killed or even tortured, the three remaining clambered out of the room, while Scotty hurried over to the transporter console and the rest went running up to the pad.

"Twenty seconds,_ hell_—!" Scotty quickly set up the automatic calculations and followed the rest up to the pad.

"—You weren't counting the entire time?" Jim demanded.

"What, were we going to say, 'Excuse us, we're running a wee bit late'?"

"I'm not a fan of futility, Scotty, you should know that."

"Spoken like a true captain," Uhura muttered.

"_Hey_!"

Uhura was about to clarify that she wasn't being sarcastic, but then the transporter engaged.

.

.

.

"So how many?"

She was the first to bring it up, and Jim's face lit up in recollection. "Count of three?"

After they called out their numbers simultaneously, Uhura grappled the air in agitated defeat while Jim started laughing smugly, her almost kicking the floor of the transporter pad but all the while still laughing in good humor and grumbling, "By one _point_?"

Scowling at Jim's rather childish triumph and already having forgotten that they'd been contesting, McCoy demanded, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Jim and Uhura were clutching a handshake then, and he was grinning wide and pointing at himself. "I am _officially_ the best shot in Starfleet...Except for this guy, probably."

Spock had finally arrived at the transporter room, and he was lifting quite an eyebrow at the over-giddy demeanors of possibly both Jim and Nyota as they all came down the stairs. There was a lengthening moment of quiet as Jim stopped in front of Spock, a somewhat embarrassed smile forming up his face.

"Hey," Jim said warmly, trying not to laugh at himself. It was in an awkward but sincere reference to just before they'd left, when he finally admitted, "I, uh. Missed you."

Spock exchanged a look with Uhura, and the expression he gave Jim then was both aloof and amused. He said in a rather schooled tone, "Lieutenant Uhura, your absence was most...unfavorable, in many respects. There was practically nothing to admire in your counterpart. As for their captain. He was particularly unruly, petulant, loud, obscene, and entirely without reservation or dignity."

Jim gave the briefest sidelong glance to Uhura that seemed to mean, _Here it comes..._

"I cannot honestly return your sentiment, Captain, as it was in actuality as if you had never left."

The two men stared each other down, knowingly, until a yeoman called for Spock's help with something and he said, "Excuse me a moment."

He left Uhura laughing, and Kirk holding a little half-cringing half-amused smile that he finally broke to say, "I told you he was gonna give me a hard time."

"Oh, he missed you," she assured him with a little pat on the arm.

"He's gonna do this for days," Jim said in a little sing-song mutter.

"Hey, you," McCoy pointed at Uhura as he came by. "Sick bay."

"In a few minutes," Uhura replied tiredly.

She and Jim lingered in the transporter room a few more minutes while Chekov rattled off about thirty-eight questions to them. Spock apparently was needed to finish the negotiation with the Halkans he'd evidently had to take care of by himself, and before he left the room he looked back at Jim and Nyota; he seemed to pause at the sight of them grinning together, and Jim kind of shrugged back at him, and Spock's eyes took on a just slightly more welcoming warmth before he turned to leave.

That night while the ship was traveling to the nearest leisure planet for the "proper shore leave" Jim insisted Scotty was going to take if no one else was, a particularly lively dinner party occurred in the mess hall. At one point, when she was sitting where she couldn't help blocking the punch bowl, Sulu came up while chatting with Chekov and tapped her on the shoulder. In his customarily monotone friendliness he muttered, "Honey, could you fill this up for me?" Uhura had just stared at his cup for a second before abruptly standing up out of her chair and hugging him.

"Wha—?" Sulu returned her hug with total puzzlement, finally just accepting it with amusement and saying, "I missed you too."

And besides some weird things like that which didn't make sense to anyone else, references were hardly ever made to the week spent in that odd reality. Jim and Nyota seemed to have an unspoken agreement that a couple things were best left between the two of them. It certainly made no sense to Spock that whenever Jim attempted to tease her now, she would rather randomly work the topic of the Starfleet Academy's annual Lab Fair into the conversation until the captain was biting his tongue.

And no one ever had a clue whether Kirk and the senior communications officer were really friends, because they would still get into those at times rather heated disagreements. Only sometimes, when their disputes were particularly out of hand and out of place, like the bickering that would inappropriately break out in the corridors when one or both of them knew they badly needed to go and cool off for a few minutes, Uhura would perhaps suddenly press her lips tight together, point out a stern finger and just say, "_Unlove_." Like it was some kind of reminder to him and to herself.

And Jim would bite back anything he was about to say, and she'd go seething off down the hall, and he'd yell, "Yeah, yeah, you too." And he'd walk off smiling.


End file.
